The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Planning missile defense, privatizing Social Security, debating education and CFR, listening to executions, Hager sticking with a gov bid, picking candidates from the WH, settling with the cybergossip:

• On Tuesday President Bush "outlined his proposal to move ahead with a missile-defense shield" and said "he would be willing to sidestep the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" to get that accomplished, the Houston Chronicle reports.
• EMediaMillWorks transcribed Bush's speech.
• Democrats and critics of the missile defense plan said "that the new missile defense systems remain unproven and expensive" and that "the old concepts of deterrence are still useful for keeping peace among the major powers, as well as intimidating smaller 'rogue states' such as Iraq and North Korea," the Washington Post reports.
• "World governments responded nervously" to the plan, AP reports.
• Russia said Bush's missile defense plan "could lead to escalating global tensions," BBCNews.com reports.
• On Thursday Bush will meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the White House, the Los Angeles Times reports.

• On Tuesday House and Senate Republicans agreed "to accept a $1.35 trillion, 11-year plan to cut taxes," the Houston Chronicle reports. The deal "reflects the White House's failure to garner enough support from moderate Senate Republicans to push through" Bush's original $1.6 trillion plan.
• "Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, issuing a warning to tax-cutting Republicans, said Tuesday they are interested in writing only one tax bill this year under reconciliation protection provided by the budget resolution," CongressDailyAM reports.

• Today Bush will name a "commission to examine Social Security and develop plans for the partial privatization of the U.S. retirement system," Reuters reports.
• "White House and Republican officials concede it may be years before Congress tries to overhaul the retirement program," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Today the House "is expected to approve legislation that would raise limits on contributions to tax-favored retirement savings accounts," Reuters reports. The bill "raises the maximum annual contribution allowed for Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) to $5,000 from $2,000."

• Bush said Tuesday "that he is abandoning hope that private school tuition vouchers will survive his education reform package," the Baltimore Sun reports. The Senate began debating Bush's education proposals Tuesday.
• "Senate negotiators have hammered out a compromise on holding states and schools accountable for student performance... clearing the way for debate on" education "as early as Wednesday," Reuters reports.

• House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said during a House Administration Committee hearing on the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill Tuesday that "he believes there is not enough money in politics" and that "the 'so-called reforms' now envisioned primarily protect incumbents but do not empower the citizens that proponents claim to have at heart," the Houston Chronicle reports.
• Campaign finance reform supporters in the House "renewed their call for the debate to begin this month," Reuters reports.
• Glen Shor, legislative director for Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., told NationalJournal.com that his boss is "cautiously optimistic" that the bill will be approved.

• Bush wrote a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday saying he wants "Congress to temporarily revive a program that allowed undocumented immigrants eligible for legal permanent residence to remain in the United States while applying for green cards," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• On Tuesday 20 House Republicans asked Bush "to support a Clinton administration regulation protecting 60 million acres of national forests from logging and road-building," the Washington Post reports.
• Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday introduced a bill "intended to make it more difficult for makers of brand-name drugs to keep cheaper generic drugs off the market," CNN.com reports.

• "The oil industry is lobbying the White House task force on energy to add more 'flexibility' to environmental regulations, allowing it to expand refineries and pipelines that supply gasoline to fuel-short markets," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Federal Aviation Administration officials "plan within days to issue tough new fuel-tank safety standards," USA Today reports. The standards will "address safety recommendations from the TWA 800 accident" five years ago and "will require more inspections of tanks and revamped designs."

• "Leftist demonstrators battled police in the streets of Berlin and Sydney yesterday, while hundreds of thousands of workers from Russia to Bangladesh marched in traditional May Day labor parades," AP reports.
• "U.S. technicians arrived on the southern Chinese island of Hainan on Tuesday to figure out how to retrieve a damaged Navy spy plane stranded since colliding with a fighter jet," AP reports.

• The Navy concluded its latest round of "bitterly protested military maneuvers" on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico Tuesday, CBSNews.com reports.
• Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was released from a federal jail Tuesday, and he "said he and others protesting naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques endured 'very inhumane' treatment at the hands of U.S. Navy security officers," AP reports.

• Virginia gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. John Hager (R) said Tuesday "he is inclined to stick with his campaign for Virginia governor because backers are telling him 'go for it,'" the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• The Washington Post profiles Hager. If the upcoming race "were a children's fable," Hager would "snatch the brass ring."
• Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler (R) "turned the tables on" New Jersey governor rival Bob Franks (R) Tuesday, challenging him to debate in each of the state's 21 counties, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. When Franks ran against Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., last year, "he badgered the Wall Street executive to accept the same heavy debate lineup."
• "President Bush urged Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan [R] on Tuesday to challenge" Gov. Gray Davis (D) in 2002, the Los Angeles Times reports. Riordan "has been cool to the idea."
• New York Gov. George Pataki (R) sent out a letter telling "his supporters to expect an assault from the Democratic contenders in next year's gubernatorial race," the New York Times reports. "The letter is an appeal to raise $135,000 in 20 days to pay for television commercials, yard signs and radio spots to publicize the Pataki administration's tax cuts."

• Lawyer Tom Boettcher (D) "issued a "vehement objection" to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's support of former Oklahoma Gov. David Walters' (D) "fledgling" Senate campaign and said Tuesday that he is considering running himself, the Tulsa World reports.
• Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) will meet with Daschle today to discuss a possible Senate bid, CongressDailyAM reports.
• "In his fourth trip to Washington in a month," St. Paul, Minn., Mayor and likely Senate candidate Norm Coleman (R) will "join other U.S. mayors and business leaders to unveil a non-profit group called CEOs for Cities," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. A spokeswoman said she wasn't aware of "political activities on the mayor's schedule."
• Last week's Little Rock, Ark., fundraiser for Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., which was headlined by President Bush, set a state record for a Senate fundraiser, bringing in $1,067,000 for Hutchinson's re-election campaign, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• Former South Dakota state Rep. Roger Hunt (R) "announced his candidacy" for the seat Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., "is vacating under a self-imposed limit of three terms," AP reports.
• The owner of Bartley's Burger Cottage in Cambridge, Mass., "is so sure" Max Kennedy (D) is running for the 9th District seat, "he's already named a burger after him," the Boston Globe reports. Kennedy joins a list of other politico burgers, including the "Ted Kennedy, 'a plump, liberal amount of burger,' and The George W. Bush Burger, a BBQ burger with a side of chads."

• Today excerpts of Georgia electrocutions that "were tape-recorded by prison staff" will be broadcast "for the first time nationally" on public radio, the New York Times reports.
• Oklahoma inmate Marilyn Kay Plantz was executed Tuesday night, the Oklahoman reports.

• "Former Ku Klux Klansman Thomas E. Blanton Jr. was convicted of first-degree murder Tuesday in the 1963 church bombing" in Birmingham, Ala., "that killed four black girls," the Washington Post reports.
• Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) signed a law Tuesday that will ban "cities and counties from suing gun manufacturers," the Miami Herald reports. The law is "a victory for the National Rifle Association."
• "Hollywood studios appeared within reach of an agreement with television and film writers late Tuesday on a new three-year contract that could avert a crippling strike for the entertainment industry and the Los Angeles economy," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• Former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal settled his "much-ballyhooed $30 million libel suit against cybergossip Matt Drudge" in what "amounts to a legal victory for Drudge," the Washington Post reports.
• Former President Bill Clinton "could bank more than $1 million" during "a speaking tour this month through seven European countries, Canada and Hong Kong," the New York Daily News reports.
• Two of the "three men who had handcuffed themselves to the entrance of the Sudan Embassy" have assembled the defense "Dream Team II"--lawyers Johnnie Cochran and Kenneth Starr. The lawyers plan to request a jury trail before July, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.